


Bonding Moment

by anthologia



Series: It's a Summer Kind of Sickness [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Blood, Concussions, F/M, Head Injury, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Vomiting, emetophobia warning, lance cradles her in his arms, they have a bonding moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7549291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthologia/pseuds/anthologia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s fucked. He’s dead. Rest in peace, Lance McClain, because they are never going to find your body, and not just because you’re bazillions of miles from your home planet. “Oh, quiznak, I’m sorry! I swear that was an accident!”</p><p>Kietha groans, and Lance skids to a stop at her side and finds himself staring at a line of blood running down her face from where he accidentally hit her in the forehead with his bayard. It wasn’t activated, so it’s not as bad as it could have been, but just – shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bonding Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Combination h/c bingo fic and prompt fill for "I swear it was an accident!" with 63!Keith (who I finally actually named) and Lance. 
> 
> Seeing as how the last time I posted rule 63 fic, I got a... let's say interesting response, I'm starting this fic out with comments moderated. If your comment exists for the sole purpose of telling me how much you hate rule 63/how transphobic or homophobic I am for writing it, etc., it will not be published. If you have something to say about the actual fic you are commenting on and you're not, you know, just being a jackass, then that's fine.

He’s fucked. He’s dead. Rest in peace, Lance McClain, because they are never going to find your body, and not just because you’re bazillions of miles from your home planet. “Oh, quiznak, I’m sorry! I swear that was an accident!”

Kietha groans, and Lance skids to a stop at her side and finds himself staring at a line of blood running down her face from where he accidentally hit her in the forehead with his bayard. It wasn’t activated, so it’s not as bad as it could have been, but just – _shit_.

Her eyes open, but she still isn’t saying anything, which is starting to get really worrying. “Kietha?”

“Shut up.” She starts to sit up, so he kneels down next to her and wraps an arm around her to help her out. “What the hell, Lance?”

“I swear I didn’t mean to!” he says, quickly and apparently too loud because she groans again and raises a hand to her head. He softens his voice to a near-whisper. “Are you okay? Do you want me to take you to one of the pods? I’ll take you to one of the pods.”

“It’s not that bad,” she says, but her hand comes away from her head stained with blood. She frowns at it like she’s not sure how it got there.

“Uh, the bleeding head wound begs to differ.”

“They bleed worse than they really are because – ” The sentence trails off into nothing while Kietha keeps staring at her hand.

Yeah, that’s not worrying at all. “Because why?”

She abruptly twists around, so she’s not facing him anymore, and throws up.

“Oh, quiznak, that’s disgusting,” Lance says, but he stays where he is and does his best to pull her hair away from her face. It’s not long enough to be much of a problem except for some of the strands in front, but he has younger siblings and cousins with long hair who’ve been sick while he was supposed to be watching them, so it’s pretty much automatic at this point.

Once she finally stops gagging, he pulls her away from the vomit on the floor. Someone’s going to have to clean that up, and that someone is probably going to be him because it’s only what he deserves for not looking before throwing his bayard in a childish fit of frustration, but for now, his main priority is to take care of her. And that includes not making her stay sitting next to a puddle of stomach acid and partially-digested food goo for any longer than necessary.

“Okay, so we’re definitely going to the cryopods,” Lance says. “Can you stand?”

“Yes,” she says, sounding irritated that he even asked, but he’ll believe that when he sees it. He ends up doing most of the work of hauling her to her feet, and once she’s upright, he tries to let her go to see if she can stand on her own. She sways for a moment and nearly does a nosedive to the floor before he catches her again.

Okay. So this is going to happen. “I’m going to pick you up. Don’t fight me.” Before she has time to process it, he scoops her up in a princess carry, huffing slightly because damn it, she is heavier than she looks. It's probably all the muscle she’s going to use to kill him for this later if he’s not lucky enough for her to get injury-induced amnesia or something.

Okay, now he feels bad for thinking that. He can deal with a little murderous rage if it means she doesn’t have brain damage.

She squints up at him. “What the hell?”

“This is easier.” He makes sure his hold is about as secure as he can get it before he starts walking them out of the training room and into the halls. “You’re gonna be fine, the cryopods are great. You’ll feel like a new person getting out of them.”

“You suck,” she says. Her eyes slip shut, and he panics for a second because wasn’t there a thing where people with concussions aren’t supposed to sleep? Or was that debunked? She’s not even really sleeping. Should he keep talking to her anyway? He’s going to keep talking to her anyway.

“No need to fear, the Lanbulance will get you where you need to go,” he says because apparently he’s a moron who doesn’t think before he lets words pop out of his mouth.

“You’re so weird,” she mutters.

Thankfully, before he can spout more nonsense, he sees someone in the hallway up ahead. “Hunk! Buddy! Do me a favor, get Coran or Princess Allura or someone to program one of the pods.”

Hunk twists around and starts walking back towards them. “Are you okay, man? What – “ He stares at Kietha. “What happened to her?”

“Nothing!” Lance says quickly. “Nothing happened, I definitely didn’t hit her in the head with my bayard by accident, she’s fine, please go do the thing.”

“Oh, _man_ ,” Hunk says, but he sprints off to find one of the Alteans because he’s a good pal.

It takes him longer than usual to carry her to the medical bay because he has to stop for a few minutes to give her a break when she goes pale and announces that he needs to stop moving unless he wants her to throw up on his shirt. Which is probably what he deserves, but he’s still going to do everything he possibly can to avoid it.

Hunk and Princess Allura are both waiting for him when he finally arrives with her still in his arms.

“Oh, my,” Allura says, “What _happened_?”

She already has a pod open and waiting, so he walks Kietha over while he answers. “Training accident. Concussion, I think? She threw up, so probably concussion.”

It’s kind of hard getting her settled into the pod (who designed them so that the person inside is upright, anyway?), but once she’s inside, it grips her and holds her in place. He stands back so that he’s out of the way when it shuts and starts a healing cycle. “Uh, how long will she be in there? For a head injury?”

“The pod will determine her injuries and how long it will take,” Allura says, “but no more than half a day.”

Oh, good. He just put their red paladin out of commission for twelve hours. What if the Galra attack, and they can’t form Voltron? Great going, Lance, you potentially doomed the universe.

Hunk claps him on the shoulder. “C’mon, Lance, it’s not _that_ bad.”

“That’s easy for _you_ to say.” A part of him wants to sit here and wait for all twelve of those hours, but he has something else to do first. “ _I_ have to go clean up the training room.”

 

 

She’s cold.

It’s pretty much the first thing she registers as she’s waking up in one of the pods. She’s not freezing, but there’s a chill in her bones that’s just this side of uncomfortable. Not that she has to feel it for long once the pod releases, letting in the warm air but also removing the support that was keeping her upright.

Her legs feel like rubber, irritatingly unresponsive to her commands. Kietha stumbles forward and tries to brace herself for impacting the floor, but then there’s a warm, solid body grabbing her and pulling her in close.

“Is she supposed to be out of there already? I thought the Princess said twelve hours!” Lance says, annoyingly loud and practically right in her _ear_.

“She said twelve hours at _most_ ,” Hunk says from somewhere behind Lance.

Kietha pushes against Lance’s chest, trying to gain a little distance so she can at least _see_ instead of having her face smooshed up against Lance’s shirt. (At least it smells relatively clean.) “What’s going on?”

“Lance gave you a concussion,” Hunk calls out.

“Dude!” Lance is weirdly reluctant to actually let go of her, keeping his hands on her arms even as she steps away, like he’s worried she’s going to tip over or something without his help. “ _C’mon!_ ”

“Oh, sorry,” Hunk says. Now that she can actually see past Lance, Kietha notes that he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor with a spread of cards from an Altean deck they’ve been trying to adapt for use in Earth card games. “Lance _didn’t_ give you a concussion. He just carried you here after no one gave you a concussion so you could heal from the concussion you didn’t have.”

“I’m _really_ sorry,” Lance says quickly. “It was completely an accident. I was trying out one of the training programs, and then you came in, and I sort of threw something before I realized you were there and it hit you in the head.”

Kietha honestly doesn’t remember any of this, although she does have a vague impression of feeling sick and someone holding her. “…What did you throw?”

“My bayard.” Lance finally lets go of her, but he’s still staring intently. “How do you feel now? Do you need to go back in the pod?”

“I’m fine,” she says. She _is_. Her muscles feel kind of stiff, but the kind of stiff like they need to be stretched or something, not the kind where they hurt.

It occurs to her that Lance still looks worried and kind of upset, so she reaches forward and pats him on the shoulder awkwardly. “Uh – accidents happen. It’s okay.” Especially since she doesn’t actually remember the accident in question. “…Is there something to eat?”

Hunk jumps up from the floor, abandoning his card game. “Uh, yeah! I think I have the food goo not tasting so… gooey.”

Lance narrows his eyes at her. “Are you _sure_ you’re feeling okay?”

Kietha snorts and shoves him in the shoulder slightly, which if nothing else makes _her_ feel more normal. “I’m fine, I’m just hungry.” He _still_ looks worried, so she rolls her eyes and adds, “Come with me if you wanna.”

“Yeah?” he says, with the dumb grin he gets that means he’s about to say something stupid. “Are you asking me on – “ Lance’s eyes widen suddenly, and he clamps a hand over his own mouth. “Sounds good,” he says instead, voice muffled, and uses his free hand to give a thumbs up.

She just snorts again and starts after Hunk, who already started walking in the direction of the kitchens. “Whatever.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you are interested in my fics and want more, I have an account at syntactition.tumblr.com where I have bits of stories that are currently in the works and other ficlets and stories that haven't made their way to AO3.


End file.
